New blood test predicts heart attack weeks in advance

Scientists have found the holy grail of heart medicine: a simple blood test that can tell patients if they're in imminent danger of having a heart attack within two weeks. Look for big, misshapen cells.

A simple test that spots abnormal cells coming from the lining of blood vessels can predict a heart attack a week or two beforehand.

Heart attacks happen when fatty deposits in an artery burst open. A blood clot forms to seal the break, but if that gets too big, it blocks off blood flow.

Blood vessels are lined with ‘endothelial cells’ that control the ability of arteries to widen and prevent clots. When there are a lot of large, misshapen endothelial cells, a heart attack is imminent, the new study shows.

More than 2.5 million Americans experience a heart attack or stroke. While doctors can tell who's at risk – people with high blood pressure and cholesterol, who smoke, have diabetes, are overweight or sedentary – there's no way to tell when a heart attack is looming.

Sometimes people pass the stress test, only to have a heart attack in the next few days. To help flag these patients, Topol and colleagues developed a blood test with the help of 44 healthy volunteers and 50 patients who had gone to emergency rooms with heart attacks in San Diego.

Then using fluorescent images, they revealed that CECs from heart attack patients look very different from those in healthy people: abnormally large, misshapen, and contain more than one nucleus.

CEC levels in heart attack patients are over 400% higher than in healthy people. “These are sick cells that have been subjected to profound inflammation,” Topol explains.

(Pictured on the right, CECs from heart attack patients. On the left, normal CECs.)

The team hopes to have this test developed for commercial use within the next 2 years. AP reports:

Topol said his team soon will begin needed studies to learn how early those cells might appear before a heart attack, and if spotting them could allow use of clot-preventing drugs to ward off damage. Some San Diego emergency rooms will study an experimental blood test with chest-pain sufferers whose standard exams found no evidence of a heart attack.